A Dozen Ways To Revel In Poetry

April 2, 2014April 6, 2018 / Laura Grace Weldon / 6 Comments

poetry fun, celebrate poetry, exquisite corpse, traveling poetry, set poems free,

It’s all about how the letters are arranged. (mosswaterss)

1. Leave poems where they’ll be discovered. Write a poem on the sidewalk with chalk, crayon it on your child’s lunch napkin, tack it on your market’s public notice board, or tuck it into a friend’s coat pocket.

2. Pull a poem from a hat. Romanian poet Tristan Tzara was denounced by his fellow Surrealists when he proposed making a poem by pulling words from a hat. Try the “Dada Manifesto on Feeble & Bitter Love” method.

Take a newspaper. Take some scissors. Choose from this paper an article the length you want to make your poem. Cut out the article. Next carefully cut out each of the words that make up this article and put them all in a bag. Shake gently. Next take out each cutting one after the other. Copy conscientiously in the order in which they left the bag. The poem will resemble you. And there you are—an infinitely original author of charming sensibility, even though unappreciated by the vulgar herd.

3. Dine with poetry. Linger over some beautiful lines as you savor each mouthful. The poems don’t have to be about food, but that can add to your pleasure. Find a rich assortment in The Hungry Ear: Poems of Food and Drink edited by Kevin Young and in Appetite: Food as Metaphor: An Anthology of Women Poets edited by Phyllis Stowell and Jeanne Foster. Or let these poems nourish you.

~”From Blossoms” by Li-Young Lee

~”Perhaps the World Ends Here” by Joy Harjo

~”Love Poem with Toast” by Miller Williams

~”The Invention of Cuisine” by Carol Muske-Dukes

~”Onions” by William Matthews

4. Sign up for poem-a-day sites. This month my wonderful library system is offering 30 days of poetry by email, featuring the work of local poets along with prompts for your own work. You may also want to subscribe to Poetry Daily.

5. Watch poetry-infused movies.

6. Play Exquisite Corpse. This strangely fascinating game was created by the Surrealists in Paris. To play with several people, each person writes a phrase on a sheet of paper, folds the paper to conceal the words, and passes it on to the next player to contribute the next line. Each participant must be unaware of what the others have written, thus producing an absurd but often delightful poem.

7. Let yourself fall in love with spoken word poetry.

~”Human the Death Dance” by Buddy Wakefield

~”Drunk Text Message to God” by George Watsky

~”OCD” by Neil Hilborn

~”Shrinking Woman” by Lily Myers

~”Accents” by Denise Frohman

~”Place Matters” by Clint Smith

8. Go on a poetry diet.

9. Set poetry books free. Leave them where strangers can find them, perhaps a coffee shop, a hospital waiting room, a dentist’s office, a barber shop, or a muffler repair shop’s waiting room. If you’d like, register them with BookCrossing.com to see where they travel.

10. Take a poem into nature. It doesn’t have to be wilderness, simply under a tree or near water, and the poems don’t need to reference nature although these do.

~”Catechism for a Witch’s Child” by J.L. Stanley

~”The Silence of the Stars” by David Wagoner

~”The Seven of Pentacles” by Marge Piercy

~”Sometimes” by Sheenagh Pugh

~”Hum” by Mary Oliver

11. Hang on to poetic life lines. Some lines read long ago wait in our memories, rising to awareness at just the right time. The Academy of American Poets offers some time-honored life lines.

This line by art historian Bernard Berenson came to my mind recently as a friend struggled with cancer. “I would have stood at street corners hat in hand begging passers by to drop their unused minutes into it.”

12. Curate a collection of your favorite poems. If a poem truly resonates with you, save it. Print such poems out out and paste them in a lovely scrapbook, or copy them by hand in a journal, or calligraph them on fine paper, or (as I do much less artfully) keep them in a word doc. After a few years you’ll have a highly personal, completely invaluable collection.

A Slanty Line Approach To Learning

March 27, 2014 / Laura Grace Weldon / 6 Comments

Image: feigenfrucht.deviantart.com)

Playfulness guru Bernie DeKoven is an amazing guy. His new book A Playful Path brims with wisdom and an irrepressible spirit of delight. It’s so good I think everyone needs a copy as a reference book on How To Be Human.

He cheerfully agreed to let me publish this guest post. Thanks Bernie!

Bernie DeKoven wonders if you’re having fun (deepfun.com)

Bernie suggests having fun (deepfun.com)

There’s an elegant model, called the “Slanty Line” principle, developed by physical educator Muska Mosstonxiv that puts the concept of individually negotiable challenge very clearly into practice.

If you’re a Phys Ed teacher, one of the things you do with kids is help them develop their high-jumping skills. In “non-adaptive” Phys Ed, the way you did this was to hold jumping contests. You’d hang a high bar horizontal to a certain height and everybody would have to take a turn jumping over the high bar. If they succeeded, they’d get to the next round, and the high bar would be raised. The contest would continue until only one person was left. That person would be lavishly praised as the one who established the high jump record for the class.

The problem with this kind of competitive incentive structure is that the kids who need the most practice are the kids who get to jump the least often. The worse they are at jumping, the sooner they’re out of the game.

Try this. Make the high bar diagonal rather than parallel to the ground. This lets everybody jump over any part of the high bar and take as many turns as they want. And what do you get?

Instead of the teacher, each kid sets his/her own challenge. The jumpers who are not so good at jumping can still jump across the high bar as many times as anyone else, they just cross at a lower point. And, when they feel the need to increase the challenge they can just station themselves at a higher part of the high bar.

No one is eliminated. No one is given prizes. Everyone wins. Repeatedly.

Slant the high bar and the authority rolls right out of the hands of the teacher, out of, actually, any one body’s hands, into everybody’s. The challenge (jump as high as you can, and then jump higher) remains the same, but the challenger has changed. It’s not the Phys Ed instructor who increases the challenge, it’s the kids, themselves: the kids as a group, and the kids, individually.

A challenge that is determined by the individual player is more complex, because it requires “reflective action.” The player must evaluate not only his or her own success, but also the success of the challenge. And even though kids can get very competitive, the challenge is ultimately self-selected, ultimately guided by sheer fun.

Without an external evaluator, each kid can devise and revise the challenge. Of course, evaluation is going on, and whether the competition is inner-directed or outer-directed, the fact is that the teacher, your fellow jumpers (both higher and lower), your inner referee; somebody is evaluating your performance, challenging you to challenge your self.

Ideally, each kid should be seeking out his/her personal level of flow, driven by the natural desire for complexity into a deeper and healthier engagement with the relationships between the human body and gravity. But, in fact, there’s still something about the way the task is framed that draws the kids apart.

Even though nobody’s eliminated, even though everyone’s free to increase or decrease the challenge, even though you don’t even have to take turns, the fact is that the challenge is directed towards the individual. With the focus on individual performance, on how high who jumps; the relationship is fundamentally the same.

And what’s worse (or more complex), someone might be attaching meaning to your performance, as if how high you can jump says something about your character!

So, what if we completely redirected the challenge, away from the individual and towards the group? What if the entire class tried to jump holding hands? Or with their arms around each other’s shoulders? Or each other’s waist?

Shifting the focus of the game away from what they can do individually (ME), we focus, also, on what the kids can do together (WE) – on collective as well as individual performance.

To jump the Slanted Bar together, we need to make sure that each individual kid is going to make it. Even though the challenge is to the group, there are still plenty of challenges to the individual player. Each has to be stationed at the appropriate part of the high bar: too high and you might not get over, too low, you might make it harder for someone else. Each has to be able to ask for help, and provide help. Preparing for the big jump, synchronizing the preparatory, simultaneous squat, each individual is doubly challenged. And yet, not competing. Same slant, same task, but fundamentally shifted experience.

Raising the high bar, you intensify the competitive relationship between the diminishing few. The game, internally and externally, becomes one of increasingly isolated MEs (the “winners”) against an increasingly disempowered WE.

Slant the High Bar, and the relationship relaxes, becomes supportive, empowering, healthy, ME\WE.

Image: excess1ve.deviantart.com

Stock Photo Bias: Youth Version

March 21, 2014March 20, 2014 / Laura Grace Weldon / Leave a comment

Search for “kids learning” stock photos. Image: bigstockphoto.com.

Female images typically found in stock photos are airbrushed models posing in starkly stereotypical scenes: sexy domestic, sexy business, and sexy-wearing-a-hardhat. These images have a great deal to say about societal perceptions of women and girls.

That’s why it’s good news that Getty Images is releasing the Lean In Collection. Their library of more than 2,500 images shows women and girls in real and powerful roles.

However, there’s another stock photo bias. Back in 2010 while layout for my book Free Range Learning was being finalized, the editors allowed me to choose the photos that would appear every few pages. I delved into the stock photo world expecting to find a whole range of relevant images, such as kids exploring nature, engaged in make-believe, being silly, spending time with people of all ages, you know, being kids. Because the book’s topic is homeschooling and alternative education, I also wanted to avoid images of young people in instructional settings (indoors or out).

No matter what search terms I tried, I kept coming up with the same limiting choices. Any variation of “learning” produced classroom-type results as well as endless photos of kids facing computer screens. It was extremely difficult to find representations of kids volunteering, doing chores, or engaged in any other purposeful work. It was even more impossible to find kids in mixed age groups (babies to elders) doing anything other than staring right at the camera with the fake merriment that seems to infest stock photos.

And gender bias was blatant. For example, any search term including “boys” showed many more active images than the same search term including “girls.” When I tried to find photos specifically of teenaged girls, the results were downright alarming. Page after page showed two categories: grimly pensive faces or, more often, coy come-on faces.

Is this how our young people are seen?

Of course, there are many ways to measure limitations and bias. (I’m particularly fond of the way Sociological Images juxtaposes images with analysis.) And there are many filters through which the world is shown us. The filters themselves don’t just affect our perception, they affect the very people they intend to portray. Stock photo images and other portrayals of youth in our culture don’t come close to showing the vibrantly whole lives around us.

As for my efforts, I gave up after several days of bleary-eyed searching. I didn’t pick any stock photos for my book. Instead, I asked people from around the country to contribute pictures of their kids doing all sorts of things. The images are small and low res, but they’re a far more valid representation of today’s young people.

Links & Updates 3-18-14

March 18, 2014March 26, 2014 / Laura Grace Weldon / 1 Comment

I’ve been emerging from my hermit world a bit more lately. I blame it on birdsong, extra sunlight, and roads that are no longer chronically icy. Already, the first crocus!

Lately I’ve been giving a series of author talks through the Cleveland-area Cuyahoga County library system. Everyone who has attended so far has been full of questions, ideas, and anecdotes about their own family’s learning journey. I say “everyone” as if crowds have shown up. That’s not the case. Just a few people, six in the last session. That may be due to library systems’ cut-backs, leaving no money for fliers and publicity for such programs. Or it may be that this particular metropolitan area does not want to talk about learning of the free ranging sort. That’s fine too.

I was honored to discover that one woman, a fellow writer and a homeschooling parent, wrote a post about what she took away from my talk on her site Raising Lifelong Learners. Colleen, you made my day. No, my week!

There are three more talks scheduled. I’d love it if you’d spread the news.

Brecksville, Tuesday March 25th at 7 pm

Parma Snow, Wednesday April 23rd at 7 pm

North Royalton, Wednesday May 21st at 7 pm

Poetry-wise, a few extra joys. One of my poems appeared as the mindfulness poem of the day on A Year of Being Here.

I also wrote a guest post for BoneSpark about a writing prompt I recently learned (with the poem that prompt prompted).

Hope

100% Renewable Energy Is Feasible and Affordable, According to Stanford Proposal. Researchers have developed detailed plans for each state in the union to move to 100 percent wind, water, and solar power by 2050 using only technology that’s already available. The plan doesn’t rely, like many others, on dramatic energy efficiency regimes. Nor does it include biofuels or nuclear power, whose green credentials are the source of much debate.

I got to interview Andrea Crosta, the founder of WildLeaks. This non-profit organization provides a secure, anonymous platform so whistleblowers can report wildlife and forest crimes happening anywhere in the world. They’re already at work facilitating investigations and prosecutions made possible by tipsters. Bookmark the link to WildLeaks, because you never know when you’ll have the chance to make a difference.

Merriment

Here’s a peek inside the intelligently witty site The Man Who Is Not My Mother. It’s basically observations from a baby’s point of view, if that baby spoke in the droll manner of a seething aristocrat.

A perfect depiction of complex carbs, by artist Gemma Correll.

Okay, I may be teetering over the rudeness cliff, but I find delightful inspiration in the obituary Walter George Bruhl Jr. wrote for himself. Maybe we should jot down a few lines for our own obituaries? Here’s a sample of his:

Walt was preceded in death by his tonsils and adenoids in 1935; a spinal disc in 1974; a large piece of his thyroid gland in 1988; and his prostate on March 27, 2000.

Wonders

Ever since I read The Secret Life of Plants I’ve been fascinated with plant intelligence. Some of that book’s assertions have been denounced, but evidence keeps showing up that provide a glimpse into a world far more complex than we might imagine. Like this study. published in The American Naturalist, which found evidence of decision-making by European Barberry (Berberis vulgaris) plants. The authors write, “Ecological evidence for complex decision making in plants thus includes a structural memory (the second seed), simple reasoning (integration of inner and outer conditions), conditional behavior (abortion), and anticipation of future risks (seed predation).”

If you want to delve deeper into this obsession there are some great books available, from the science-y to the mystical.

Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World

The Secret Garden: Dawn to Dusk in the Astonishing Hidden World of the Garden

The Secret Teachings of Plants: The Intelligence of the Heart in the Direct Perception of Nature

Oh, and we’re all cousins. Check out the charts on Wait But Why. I think we should plan a planetary-wide reunion weekend….

I Heckle, You Heckle, Let’s All Heckle

March 11, 2014January 29, 2015 / Laura Grace Weldon / 5 Comments

I just got back from a workshop teaching us how to research injection wells for a citizen’s audit project. It’s boring and difficult. I’m appalled when I look closely at the data. I don’t want to do it, although I will because we’re currently mired in a struggle over fracking.

That may not be your issue but of course there are plenty of others that jab at our consciences. Drone strikes, refugees, melting polar regions and burning rainforests, poisons in our food, toxic tactics wielded by the powerful. The list goes on and on. We feel like screaming in the streets, but there are bills to pay and meals to make.

I haven’t thrown open my window to yell, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it any more.” But I want to affirm the heckling all of us do. These days the word “heckle” has entirely negative connotations. It conjures up images of rude people who interrupt performers and ruin the experience for everyone. Instead, lets hop on a wagon to the past where this word meant much more (as explained by Mark Forsyth in The Etymologicon).

Heckling originally referred to the process of combing sticks, burrs, and knots from sheep’s wool so it could be spun into usable fibers. Sheep tend to ramble around without any concern for fleece-related loveliness, so this is quite a task. People who did the combing were naturally called hecklers.

Back in the eighteenth century, the wool trade flourished in the town of Dundee, Scotland. Hecklers worked long hours together. In the morning as they set to work heckling, one of their fellow hecklers read aloud from the day’s news. There was plenty to read, since this was an era when all sorts of publishers put out lots of newspapers, broadsheets, and handbills. The hecklers were thus well-informed in many subjects.

When politicians and power brokers of the day addressed the public, the hecklers combed over their speeches as thoroughly as they combed wool. They raised objections, pointed out contradictory facts, called people to account for their behavior. In other words, they heckled. These hecklers formed what would now be called trade unions, using their collective efforts to bargain for better pay and perks. They also stirred up awareness of worker’s rights while empowering ordinary people to speak up against injustice.

Hecklers were people who were knowledgeable and alert to hypocrisy. They were aware how easily something nasty can snag what’s useful into uselessness until it’s pulled free, no matter how arduous and smelly the process.

Heckling is a potent way to question the powerful. Over the centuries the term implied thoughtful questions from the audience which a speaker would answer before going on. In parliamentary proceedings it remains a method of engaging in open discourse with a speaker by someone who isn’t entitled to the floor.

Nearly everyone I know is actually a heckler. We’re well-informed. We care. We lean toward positive change, willing it into being by our words and thoughts as well as our actions.

The poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti joins other writers and thinkers who claim the masses are sheep, as he does in this evocative poem.

PITY THE NATION
(After Khalil Gibran)

Pity the nation whose people are sheep
and whose shepherds mislead them.
Pity the nation whose leaders are liars,
whose sages are silenced
and whose bigots haunt the airwaves.
Pity the nation that raises not its voice
except to praise conquerors
and acclaim the bully as hero
and aims to rule the world
by force and by torture.
Pity the nation that knows
no other language but its own
and no other culture but its own.
Pity the nation whose breath is money
and sleeps the sleep of the too well fed.
Pity the nation—oh pity the people
who allow their rights to erode
and their freedoms to be washed away.
My country, tears of thee
Sweet land of liberty!

With respect to Mr. Ferlinghetti, I disagree. His poem is packed with truth but it doesn’t acknowledge how these exact circumstances also propel people to deeper understanding and stronger commitment to change.

I see eyes opening. I see loving hearts broken by Earth’s sorrows, knitted back together with hope. I see the sort of consciousness rising that wakens more and more people.

We aren’t the sheep. We’re the hecklers.

Heckling combs. Image: nimpsu.deviantart.com

Help Kids Learn About Business & Finance: 60+ Resources

March 6, 2014April 11, 2018 / Laura Grace Weldon / 3 Comments

“Money often costs too much.”—Ralph Waldo Emerson

Our society is preoccupied with money, but on the most superficial level. The meaning underlying monetary choices is rarely discussed. Still, right now, we have a profound impact on our children’s attitudes about finances and spending. It’s useful to take a close look at the wisdom behind the choices we demonstrate to them.

Do our spending decisions reflect our values?

Do our careers foster our own abilities?

Who are our financial role models?

What does it mean to have enough?

Do we have ample time for our families, for activities we enjoy, for quiet reflection?

In Your Money or Your Life, authors Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin redefine a transaction we take for granted, working. They describe it as trading life energy for money. That life energy is subtracted from the hours we have to live. The same goes for spending. If money represents hours of life energy expended, our use of money also expresses how we choose to literally “spend” our time. Not everyone would agree with the authors’ valuation. But most of us recognize the peace that comes of living in harmony with our own priorities.

Here are dozens of ideas and resources to help you raise money-wise young people.

Start budgeting and personal finance early. Some parents prefer to have all family members involved in running the household economy. They draw up a budget, talk over expenses, and pay bills together. This way children come to know what terms like “interest,” “finance charge,” and “invest” mean as they take part in this family chore, even if at a young age they are only putting stamps on envelopes and discussing what charities to support. Involved children are also less likely to wheedle for purchases because they understand exactly what it takes to save for longer-term goals such as a family vacation. And they see how personal decisions impact financial security.

Use real money. Adding up purchase prices, figuring percentages off, comparing costs, and calculating change make more sense using actual money. Practice at home, then empower children to use these new skills at the bank, farmer’s market, and movie theater.

Learn about economics through picture books. Check out If the World Were a Village by David J. Smith, , Bananas: From Manolo to Margie by George Ancona, A New Coat for Anna by Harriet Ziefert, Sam and the Lucky Money by Karen Chinn, How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World by Marjorie Priceman, Abuela’s Weave by Omar Castaneda, Alexander, Who Used to Be Rich Last Sunday by Judith Viorst, One Hen: How One Small Loan Made a Big Difference by Kate Smith Milway, and Pigs Will Be Pigs: Fun with Math and Money by Amy Axelrod.

Tour local businesses. Field trips open a child’s sense of possibility in their own career aspirations.

Host an entrepreneurial fair. Invite children to create a product to sell. This may be a craft, service, invention, edible item, or work of art. Provide an area to promote and display their wares at a group meeting or public venue. They should have sufficient supplies of their product to meet demand, but as with any business the exact number is an educated guess. You may choose to have start-up meetings beforehand to discuss product development, displays, and other details. Encourage each child to keep track of expenses so they can evaluate the business potential of their product afterwards. Promote the fair to the public, invite extended family, and encourage your group to support the efforts of their youngest business people. Have a follow-up meeting with participants to talk about their earnings in relation to the time and expense of making their product.

Involve young people in a family business. Whether a small-scale Etsy business or a full time company, children can provide valuable assistance while learning what it takes to find customers, keep track of expenses, pay taxes, and build a strong business.

Seek learning relationships with adults who have careers or skills of interest through your own knowledge networks as well as person-to-person learning networks.

Have fun. Invent a new form of currency. Learn about bartering, then try it. Save up for a family adventure by selling things on Craigslist or eBay Turn lunch at home into a restaurant meal complete with menu listings, service, and bill. Write up movie descriptions with viewing times and prices for family video night.

Play board games such as The Farming Game, The Construction Game, Monopoly, Pay Day, The Game of Life, Lawsuit, and CASHFLOW for Kids.

Teach kids to budget. Ensure that children make regular monetary decisions. Talk about needs versus wants, perhaps consulting Jennifer Larson’s book, Do I Need It? or Do I Want It?: Making Budget Choices. As with other learning experiences, young people need the opportunity to think through their choices, make mistakes, and try again.

You might choose to create three budget categories (long-term savings, short-term savings, donations) with your child. Between you, decide on a percentage of money for each category. If your child decides to change the percentage or the amount when his or her income fluctuates, recalculate.

Encourage budding enterprises before your children reach a typical hiring age. They might mow lawns, walk dogs, help parents entertain young children, sell homemade goodies, help with yard sales, assist with computer service, remove pet waste in yards, move garbage cans from house to street and back, rake leaves, be a child-minder during meetings, weed garden beds, set up/explain electronics, help with holiday decorations, watch pets, sell crafts, etc.

Hold a garage sale or charity fund-raiser. Involve children in all phases from planning to follow-up.

Learn how you vote with your dollars. Research products according to health value, corporate responsibility and other standards using Good Guide. Check out how those statistics are gathered and how ethical shopping choices can make an impact.

Invest. With your child, sign up for a joint account on e-Trade or other low minimum investment company. Choose stocks together and watch what happens.

Track mock Investments. Build a mock investment portfolio with your children. Have them list several companies they choose (perhaps related to their interests or favorite products). Help them locate ticker symbols and current stock prices. Every week, help them record the latest prices along with the date. Calculate the gains or losses. These are short-term fluctuations, so talk about longer term trends as well.

You might start a investment club. Using hypothetical funds, members research stocks and returns, competing for the best results. They may wish to use online stock market simulation sites or register for The Stock Market Game (which charges fees).

Build skills and experience through community service. Here are 40 ways kids can volunteer.

Seek out finance lessons. Companies dealing in finance such as banking institutions, insurance companies, and brokerage firms may happily offer a speaker for a group meeting or materials for a class. As with any curricula offered by a business, be aware that there may be implied advertising for the company’s services or tendency to advance the company viewpoint. It’s often eye-opening to discuss this aspect with your children.

Make connections with area businesses. Find responsive businesses and career-related clubs willing to offer programs, workshops, classes, and volunteer opportunities for area youth. Your librarian as well as your local Chamber of Commerce can guide you to organizations, clubs and programs. Again, be wary of educational offerings for kids that are thinly disguised promotions.

Look at the larger economic picture (and remember that economic theory is just that, theoretical). Check out the financial platforms of different political parties. Explore how different countries handled the finance sector failures of 2008 (comparing US to Iceland is particularly interesting). Look at measures of income inequality in different countries. Learn about GNP, GDP, and Gross National Happiness.

Pay attention to the news with an eye to the impact on business and the economy. Talk about differing theories on what factors create high prices, inflation, unemployment, and more. Teens may enjoy Economics for the Impatient by C.A. Turner as well as The Cartoon Introduction to Economics: Volume One: Microeconomics
and The Cartoon Introduction to Economics: Volume Two: Macroeconomics both by Yoram Bauman.

Guess where income tax dollars are spent. Draw a pie chart and allocate resources where you think they are spent or where you think they should be spent. Then compare your chart to data based on actual government spending by searching online for “U.S. federal discretionary spending pie chart.”

Draw up a “flying the nest” budget. Ask teens where they’d like to live and what work they’d like to do in a few years. Your son wants to live on a boat and lead adventure tours? Check out houseboat rental costs and what income he might expect as a guide, as well as regular expenses like food, insurance, and phone coverage.

Take a clear look at college and college alternatives.

Participate in the collaborative consumption movement. It’s about sharing knowledge, skills, and resources. This trend not only helps save money and preserve resources, it connects us to people in meaningful ways. It’s part of what’s often called a gift economy. Teens and up can learn more about this by reading Charles Eisenstein’s wonderful book. Sacred Economics: Money, Gift, and Society in the Age of Transition.

De-emphasize the importance of “stuff.” There’s strong evidence that the more materialistic young people are, the unhappier they tend to be. Research shows that people who hold materialistic values are more likely to suffer from a whole dumpster load of problems. This includes aggressive behavior, insecurity, depression, low self -esteem, narcissism, even physical maladies. And when people place high value on material aims, they’re prone to have trouble with interpersonal relationships and intimacy. Materialism is also related to less independent thinking and lower value placed on being “true to oneself.” That’s a festering mess we’d like to avoid. (For more information and useful ideas, check out Five Ways Frugal Living Benefits Kids.)

Educational Game Resources

The Bakery Shop is a business game for young children, letting them decide what ingredients, baking mitts, and bakers will keep customers happy.

Coffee Shop is a business game for kids 8 and up. Players need to factor in variables including supplies, recipes, past sales, even weather predictions. Find many more math games at Cool Math.

Sense & Dollars is a set of games challenging kids on what they know about earning, spending, and saving money. Charge, for example, lets students choose luxury objects and pick a payment plan. It then calculates the object’s real, eye-opening cost once credit card interest is calculated.

International Racing Squirrels provides amusing financial literacy through the trials of managing a team of racing squirrels.

The Great Piggy Bank Adventure lets players pursue goals through smart saving tactics.

Heifer International enables players to create sustainable solutions to poverty.

Sweatshop provides a wealth of real world moral dilemmas as players work to please bosses in the fashion industry.

Online Resources

PBS Kids Don’t Buy It has a wealth of resources about advertising tricks, the effect of commercials on buying habits, and how to determine what a product is really worth.

The Story of Stuff Project offers programs and resources as well as highly informative videos including The Story of Stuff, The Story of Bottled Water, and The Story of Cosmetics.

Institute of Consumer Financial Education offers quizzes, tips and facts in the “Children and Money” section of the website.

Interactive Mathematics Money Math lets young people find out what a $1,000 credit card debt looks like over time, how long it takes to double money based on the interest rate, and other personal finance calculations.

Junior Achievement (JA) provides volunteers from the business community to present JA curriculum to groups of students. Junior Achievement Student Center is a teen-friendly site geared to help explore careers, learn how to start up a business, and prepare for higher education.

Young America’s Business Trust is a non-profit established as an outreach effort of the Organization of American States.

Econedlink provides classroom style economic and personal finance resources for learning.

Foundation for Teaching Economics offers resources like videos made by kids, easily accessed benchmarks for the US economy, and teaching resources.

HiP provides tips to help entrepreneurs attract new consumers and organizations interested in supporting, investing, and buying from a new business. (Thanks Nick!)

Print Resources

Beyond the Traditional Lemonade Stand: Creative Business Stand Plans for Children of All Ages by Randi Lynn Millward

Money Sense for Kids by Hollis Page Harman

The Complete Guide to Personal Finance: For Teenagers by Tamsen Butler

~~~~~

Portions of this post excerpted from Free Range Learning.

finance, teaching about finances, money smart kids,

Image: kkart.deviantart.com

Lale Labuko: Cultural Superhero

February 26, 2014 / Laura Grace Weldon / 3 Comments

Images: omochild.org

An ancient tribal practice has killed tens of thousands of children over the centuries. I’m working to make sure my generation brings an end to it forever. —Lale Labuko

Lale Labuko was the first person from the Omo Valley to attend school. Each time he left his village for boarding school he walked 65 miles through desert wilderness, leaving a culture without written language in order to fulfill his father’s wish that he learn to read and write.

When Labuko was 15 years old, on a visit home, he witnessed an elder grab a two-year-old girl from her weeping mother’s arms. The elder hurried away toward the river and returned alone. Labuko asked his mother to explain. It was the first time he heard the word mingi. It was also the first time he learned that he had two sisters, both deemed mingi, who were killed before he was born.

Mingi is a term used by many tribes of the Omo River Valley in southwestern Ethiopia. It labels certain young children carriers of a curse. Babies can be deemed mingi for one of several reasons: they’re born out of wedlock, their married parents have not received the necessary three blessings by elders, or their top teeth come in before their bottom teeth.

Ancient traditions dictate that grievous harm will come to the village unless the mingi dies.

Labuko pledged to end this tradition. He’s doing so with respect for tribal culture while also changing ingrained fears. Several years ago he convinced elders to “Let me be the bush” as an alternative to leaving little ones in the bush, where they die of starvation and exposure.

Although a number of tribes continue to carry out the practice, Labuko’s tribe, the Kara, officially banned mingi in a 2012 ceremony. It’s said that if rains fall after any ceremony, the gods have bestowed their blessings. After this ceremony the rains were bountiful. And when the sun came out a rainbow appeared over the Kara village.

Labuko is now co-founder of Omo Child which works to end the horrific practice of mingi. His organization also rescues and cares for mingi children. So far they have saved 37 babies from death. These children are being raised in a safe home and receiving an education.

National Geographic bio of Lale Labuko

Images of Omo children by photographer Steve McCurry

Get involved in the work of Omo Child

Dreaming of Halos

February 19, 2014 / Laura Grace Weldon / 2 Comments

Louis Welden Hawkins – The Haloes, 1894

Dreams are a stairway to what’s beyond our ordinary awareness. That’s true of daytime dreams—aspirations that become more achievable as we help each other make our wishes come alive. But here I mean dream dreams, you know, ones the dictionary defines as a “series of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations occurring involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep.”

Some of us more easily recall dreams than others. Apparently this has to do with reactivity in certain regions of the brain, although experts insist we can train ourselves to more effectively remember dreams.

No matter the facts, I like to talk about dreams. I’m fascinated by cultures where dreams are discussed and used as a way of tapping into a stream of wisdom that’s forgotten in so-called advanced societies.

And I love to get together with friends for dreamwork sessions where we share and investigate our dreams, something we do far too infrequently but always find illuminating.

If I had better follow-through for this passion I’d be one of those people who keep illustrated dream journals where the guidance found in dreams is recognized. Alas, I’m not. I only write down dreams when they linger in my head long after I’ve woken, in a not-remotely-arty Word doc. Though I started this particular doc back in 2000, I’ve recorded only a few dreams each year. Most of the time they ramble along in weirdly disjointed anti-logic, as dreams tend to do. But several feel like teachings. Here’s one from August 2007 that stays with me.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A dark-haired child in medieval dress, somewhere between five and eight years old and with a wise aspect, was my guide in this brief dream.

She showed me a number of different paintings. They rose up before me from nowhere with complete darkness around them. Most were icons or close-ups of religious paintings, all with halos around people’s heads.

I thought to myself that the halos seemed like auras, trying to notice which were painted with solid lines and which were more diffuse. The moment I tried to apply logic the pictures stopped.

The child explained. She used words that were simple, beautiful, and had the resonance of the ages behind them. I cannot recall most of what she said, as it was well beyond my understanding, but I’ve retained the following meaning.

The accepted beliefs and worldview of an era form a sort of perimeter around each person. This is the way of people. Those who have been called mystics and saints are people who perceive what’s beyond these boundaries. This perception, this apprehension of something greater, causes the perimeter itself to glow. The breaching of what’s closed is powerful energy.

I wish I could express it better. In the dream I could feel what pulsed at the juncture of small human reality and larger Truth as a kind of electricity or creative force. It emitted light. The energy was generative and alive with possibility. I was awed to glimpse it, even as dream material.

The dream is the small hidden door in the deepest and most intimate sanctum of the soul, which opens to that primeval cosmic night that was soul long before there was conscious ego and will be soul far beyond what a conscious ego could ever reach. Carl Jung

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Resources for those of you fascinated by the dream wisdom accessible to us all.

Original Wisdom: Stories of an Ancient Way of Knowing by Robert Wolff

anything by Carl Jung, such as The Essential Jung

anything by pioneer of Active Dreaming, Robert Moss

The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World by Wade Davis

The Mind at Night: The New Science of How and Why We Dream by Andrea Rock

The Kin of Ata Are Waiting for You by Dorothy Bryant (sci-fi world where reality is shaped by dreams)

Antonio Mancini- Self-Portrait, 1883

Links & Updates 2-17-14

February 17, 2014February 17, 2014 / Laura Grace Weldon / 5 Comments

I love winter. I know this isn’t a widely shared sentiment, especially after the winter we’ve had (in my view, a beautiful one thanks to bountiful snow). In fact, I’m not at all eager for spring yet. I’m still busy enjoying what winter looks like on our little farm. Only a few more weeks to adore it, then it’ll be mud season.

Here’s one gift of this winter. We got to see an unusual weather phenomenon called snow rollers right in our backyard.

And hieroglyphics in melted windowsill frost.

One more snow-related update. The tombstone up against the front porch foundation is now partially unburied (pun!) thanks to wind erasing the snow cover. Yes, a tombstone. (One of the many reasons even the mailman wonders about us.) Let me explain. One of my delightful offspring got interested in all things Norse about two years ago. He researched ancient mythology and runes, started learning to speak Swedish, and worked hard to teach himself stone carving using hand tools. It’s not easy to find exactly the right rock for such endeavors. His older brother, always considerate, bought a headstone that was deeply discounted thanks to a typo and presented it as a birthday gift. My Norse-a-phile ground the name and dates off the stone. Then using a rough runic alphabet, he carved a message in the stone. Want to guess what it says? I found it amusing so it’s a good bet it’s a little rude.

Okay, on to some links.

Merriment

My daughter suggests Barbie jeep racing as our new family sport. We’re looking for the right hill…

For far deeper merriment, I heartily recommend a book written by my friend and fun expert, Bernie DeKoven. Here’s a review of A Playful Path. And here’s where you can get an e-book version FOR FREE! (I bought several print versions as well for gifts because I consider this book essential.)

Hope

Activism and, more importantly, an increase on society’s ethical maturity is helping to advance the rights of tribal people. Check out good news at Survival International here and here.

Members of the Dongria Kondh tribe. (Image by Jason Taylor)

Here’s nonviolence in action.

(Image: hotair.com)

Orthodox priests stood between the demonstrators and the Ukrainian special police force. Holding icons and crosses, they successfully stopped the conflict.

Poetry

Powerful spoken word poetry by Guante.

An extraordinary poem I’ve used when teaching nonviolence classes, “Invisible Work” by Alison Luterman.

I stopped and let myself lean
a moment, against the blue
shoulder of the air. The work
of my heart
is the work of the world’s heart.
There is no other art.

Read the full piece here.

And what feels like a gift, a very nice review of my book by We Drink Because We’re Poets.

Learning

25 STEM Leaders Who Were Homeschooled.

School Ditches Rules, Looses Bullies.

And what I’m learning—Imaginary Motherhood.

Okay, Bringing Winter Up Again

To drag some learning experiences out of the last snowfall, try making snow ice cream or conducting the clean snow experiment. It’s all here in 15 Smarty Pants Ways to Enjoy Snow.

If you’re stuck indoors, try yarnbombing furniture or communicating via banana. Check out more ideas in 40 Cabin Fever Cures for Kids.

Auditory Yes!

Un-Cliché Your Valentine’s Day

February 11, 2014February 9, 2023 / Laura Grace Weldon / 2 Comments

Heart made while hiking. (Image by Sam Weldon)

Valentine’s Day may be about love but it’s too often expressed with clichéd sentiments and perfunctory presents. Overall U.S. Valentine’s Day spending (updated for 2023) is estimated to be 25.9 billion. Yes, billion. In a world that needs more tenderness and less stuff, there are alternatives. That doesn’t mean giving up on cards, chocolate, and flowers if these expressions truly touch your heart. It means we can do more with the love we feel for people, our communities, and for the natural world—any day of the year.

Art-oriented

Find hearts everywhere. You can stop by a gallery or museum, finding hearts and other representations of love. Or challenge yourself to photograph hearts you see in nature and everyday objects.

Make original hearts. Create a heart out of something unexpected. Try Legos or spoons or hammers. Then photograph it. Send it out via social media or print the image on cards. For a wealth of inspiration, check out Monday Hearts for Madalene.

Learn about symbolism of the heart. This shape has been painted on cave walls by Cro-Magnon people, showed up in ancient Minoan art, and appeared on 15th century playing cards. Assign loving symbolism to some other shape and use it as your secret language.

Kindness-oriented

Appreciate people in your community. Use children’s drawings as wrapping paper, tucking inside each one a piece of wrapped candy or other goodie, along with a note like “thanks for being so nice” or “you made my day.” Then stay on the lookout for a cheery cashier, helpful librarian, or kind friend to hand a surprise package. Find more ways kids can perform community service, toddler to teen, here. No kids? No problem. Wrap up tiny gifts and do the same thing. It cues us to see goodness everywhere.

Put dollars to work. Give money out to your family and friends, with a caveat. Challenge recipients to do as much good as they can with $10 (or whatever denomination you choose), then report back with the results by a certain deadline. You might set up a Facebook event page for this so their ideas are shared. (Yup, side benefits. This boosts the happiness of the givers too.)

Say Thanks. Get in touch with Great Aunt Betty to say you appreciate advice she gave you decades ago, send a note of appreciation to a teacher who made a difference, call your parents to share a sweet memory from your childhood. (Again, side benefit, gratitude boosts your own health.)

Volunteer. Walk dogs at a shelter, or make care packs to share with people experiencing homelessness and hand them out, or deliver Meals on Wheels. For more ideas, check out Volunteer Match.

Commit good deeds anonymously. Valentine’s week is also Random Act of Kindness week. Ideas? Smile at five strangers, leave quarters at the laundromat or in the change slot of vending machines, do someone else’s chore secretly, pay the tab for the next customer, clean up someone else’s mess.

Gift-oriented

Make a scratch-off card. It takes paint and dish soap, that’s it. Make a love list card or one that reveals a surprise. Or come up with your own design.

Give gift certificates from locally owned businesses and organizations like a greenhouse, restaurant or coffee shop, massage therapist, art gallery, sports shop, bookstore. Or pay for a few hours of an local worker who specializes in home repair, house cleaning, or landscaping.

Give experiences. Go to the theater, take tai chi or weaving lessons, go horseback riding, attend a concert of music new to you, take a city tour, head to a skating rink, or rent a houseboat/

Give gifts for a good cause. There are all sorts of nonprofit stores and charitable shopping sites. Try Water.org, Freewaters, Serrv, Greater Good, Ten Thousand Villages. Or get a gift from the gift shop of a non-profit in your area.

Nature-oriented

Plant something. Start seeds indoors for your garden. You might start extras to set up a seed or plant exchange.

Get out there. Picnic outside no matter what the weather, or hike somewhere new to you, or go outside after dark to look at the stars.

Build together. Make a fairy house in the woods using nearby sticks and rocks. Build a snow fort. Make a hide-out in the attic or backyard or anywhere you can enter the magic of hidden spaces.

Re-experience childhood delights. Swing on the swings, climb a tree, run a footrace, cook marshmallows over a campfire, play outdoor games.

Romance-oriented

Revive the mix-tape tradition. Put together a collection of tunes that says what you feel. In this instance, sappy is good. Even better reaction, put together a sexy playlist.

Do something that scares you, together. Go bungee jumping or rock climbing or whatever gets your heart racing. Even a scary movie can be good for the love life.

Talk about first loves. Maybe just first crushes. It’s a way of tenderly exploring the inner world of your partner’s earliest years.

Make date night fascinatingly unexpected. Try an alternative identity date. Make up your own triathlon (competing in air hockey, tongue twisters, and onion ring eating). Participate in a mud run. Here are 43 ideas for livelier date nights.